When I first moved to DC, I started this blog because I had some time on my hands. I also came across some situations I found amusing, or thoughts I found “deliciously” ridiculous. Seemed like a good intersection of time : mind, so I got to writing. After, what, a year, two years? I stopped. By the time I got home I wanted to run, to walk my dog, cook, host dinner parties, any number of fun things. Having spent the day behind a computer for the most part and I think many of you can relate, I took little joy in opening up my computer again, even for my personal quippings. NO MORE TYPING…unless for rapid fire texts to all my loves across the country. I have limitless energy to text…as…many of you know.
From my last post to today, I actually have more demands on my time, not less. Is that true? Am I exaggerating? The demands on my time are different, but are there actually more demands, or are the demands of a different nature? The demands might have higher stakes, but maybe take the same amount of time to accomplish as my demands required however many years ago? Probably…maybe. Regardless, I felt the creative tug beginning to happen. Ideas that needed a home besides in my head, situations observed that needed an outlet. I think writing is fun and I missed it.*
I haven’t gone back through my blog posts yet, but the stories I do remember, I remember fondly. They made me smile. And best compliment, a friend once texted me to say one of my posts was “funny as shit.” That can really propel someone, and me specifically—to think you’re funny and every once in awhile be told you are indeed, funny. It’s fun to be funny, and it’s fun to try to be funny. And if you ever want to tell me you think my writing is funny**, well, don’t let me hold you back, you be you.
I’ve been on social fairly heavily in the years away from writing my blog, so if you wanted to, you could figure out what I’ve been up to during that time. I think it would be a bit redundant to list out what’s happened in the time between. I mean, I honestly could go on about what I’ve been up to, but I feel like English teachers, professors, creative writers, or people who are just plain good at writing would caution: do it: write out what you’ve been up to, but you better be really good at it—be clever, be different, be a new new to the question, “so what have you been up to these past few years?” David Foster Wallace, give me strength, and I still don’t think I’ll attempt such a topic.
I do find a few things interesting that I would like to enumerate.
First, a theme within my blog was triggers. What I mean by triggers is specific phrases from movies or books from my child and early adulthood, song lyrics—any number of, what were for me, earworms that when I hear or read them I immediately need need needed*** to finish the sequence. Missy Elliot songs, basically anything having to do with Goonies or The Last Dragon, Othello passages…my blog discusses various starts and stops in my head. Every once in awhile I could even embed a youtube video to add texture to what I was trying to get at and that was a technological feat worthy of its own footnote. I think many of those videos don’t link up anymore, so, someone is going to have to fix that.
I’ve read Motherless Brooklyn by Jonathan Lethem**** and wish more writers, designers, character casters, put forward characters who have different abilities and tarry at different places on different spectrums, and that those differences aren’t even really mentioned. I don’t know much about Tourette’s Syndrome, but from Lethem I learned about the pull, the pull to continue a sequence and the relief of completing that sequence. Fascinating. When main character Lionel Essrog, as a child felt the need to jerk his head to the right (I think it was to the right), how he tried to not do that, and how he felt better when he did, and how that need affected his whole family…I just had never read or been part of anything like that before and I was, I think the best word to use is, thankful, that Lethem gave us such a regular anti-hero with a difference. That pull that Lionel felt might not be the same for everyone with Tourette’s, it is, after all, one perspective. I dated someone who self-identified as having OCD. Perhaps you know people in your life who identify with OCD. This particular person had to have squares and rectangles like papers, folders, books, lined up straight across the right angle of his table.***** Right angle over right angle. I never understood what that could possibly feel like to need to move objects so they were at right angles. Many peopel learned from Ellen DeGeneres about gay people when she came out on her show, and from the television show, Good Times the life of some black people. Some people learned about the lives of the supernumeraryly rich in Crazy Rich Asians, a movie I tricked myself into seeing because I thought it would be interesting, but turns out was just a romance flick. Some of us just have no idea how other people live, or what compels them. I find it all 93% endlessly fascinating.
The struggle is to show an example of other | different | not-like-you representations, in a way that isn’t tokenism. Some would argue, if you highlight one, and that one is the only one, that immediately suggests and demands token. I don’t remember who I was listening to being interviewed on NPR, but upon being asked, how to prevent Latinx****** characters from being tokens, she replied, simply have more Latinx characters represented and normalize it. Having more representations in our cultural creations has the power to open doors and maybe can act to build bridges, inspire questions and curiosity and I have to also think, since we live in a complex world, ensure yet others will put up walls of disgust, fear, judgement. (Speaking of disgust, I can talk about my love of Martha Nussbaum later…I started her book Hiding from Humanity: Disgust, Shame, and the Law and lost my copy. If you read a title like this one and your face looks like the smiley face emoji with the hearts for eyes, me too. So fascinating.)
Let me bring this back: when I hear a certain phrase, song, see a sign that I have a certain connection to, I immediately step into the hypnotic tunnel to finish the sequence associated with how I know that piece. I finish the sequence because I want to, and because I find it fun. I am fortunate that I don’t have to complete the sequence if I don’t want to. For example, though you feel compelled to show off your moonwalk abilities because someone reminds you that “back in the day” you were known for your dance skills. Even if that person is slightly implying they’d like to see those skills today, don’t mean you should. Especially if the situation calls for you to do othe things like apologize for participating in past behavior that at the time was traumatic and horrible, and that today remains traumatic and horrible. You apologize, you discuss how your attitudes have changed over time (and let others decide whether or not they believe you), you ask for people’s time, if they’re willing to give it, to talk with you about how your actions caused harm and ways you can make authentic amends. You don’t fucking attempt to moonwalk because there is nothing that is compelling you to finish that sequence that is out of your control to stop.
I realize I said the word “trigger” a lot. I look at that word today and it just feels violent to me. It feels like onomatopoeia+, and that sound association that I hear connotes danger, fear and harm. It wasn’t that long ago, but things are very different, using that word feels very different. I feel strange saying trigger. I feel strange saying “crazy” because people in my life have told me how much weight the term “crazy” carries, and I agree with them. Of all the things I consider, and in the moments I consider them across the passage of time, I had not considered enough how harmful using the word, “crazy” might be to others until a couple years ago. I’ve not 100% eradicated the use of crazy when I think something is absurd, funny, confusing etc, but I am intentionally working on it.
Between now and my last post, there have been mass shootings in Orlando, in Las Vegas, in my beloved Pittsburgh, in Virginia Beach where my sister and my niece live, in San Bernardino, in Thousand Oaks, in Dallas, in Roseburg, in…well, I don’t want to go on. I could go on and I don’t want to go on. For the people who were taken unnecessarily and too soon in these locations and to the too many who were taken too soon in the locations I didn’t write, and to their families: this should not have happened. Your lives matter. Instead of trigger, I now say “inspire.”
Respectfully moving to a different section of this post.
Second, like an Escher painting, not all the stairs have to lead to a door in my world. And sometimes the stairs defy gravity and are upside down and stop at the ceiling. At the time he was creating, I’m not sure what people thought of Escher (but feel free to tell me)—why would he build a world of melting clocks and stairs that lead to nowhere. That is uncomfortable, and that doesn’t feel…safe? Normal? Status? Some of my favorite narrators in literature are those you can’t trust. Sometimes the narrators lie to us. Sometimes they lie to us, but they think they’re telling the truth; and my favorite is when they lie to us because they are intentionally trying to deceive us. I’m not saying I’m going to lie to you in my writing, that’s not my particular style, but I prefer the messy, and while I like to enumerate, I prefer the nonlinear. I prefer multiple threads interacting with one another to tell a story, and often, when I’m telling the story, those threads typically tie together, but I make zero promises that that will be the outcome. I prefer when you have some extra parts that don’t fit into the widget you just built. And for some of you, that might feel frustrating, and for some of you, you might not see the point in having extra parts, and that’s okay. For many of you, you might not even notice, of if you do notice, it’s not incompatible or newsworthy. I like all of that.
Third, I will say I don’t think I ever referenced an emoji in my old blog. I have much pride for the fact that the emoji, in its biblical sense 🙂 🙂 is credited to a Carnegie Mellon alum for inventing. I have a lot of pride in this, as a fellow alum, and if that ain’t true—if it’s some nerdy urban legend that a CMU alum created the emoji, don’t tell me, or if you need need need to tell me, do it over dinner and drinks. Wine and dine me, and “well, do it and be brief” when I’m waiting for my coffee, just say it. If you have to say it at all.
Fourth, for my personal writing, I write like how I talk…and I talk like how I feel: generally slightly overexcited, or fully overexcited, with lots of exclamation points and at a very fast clip, and definitely not usually overly linear.
So, I’m back. I’m writing again-ish. I’m a genXer and though I happen to be a decider, ain’t no one better than the “ish”, the “maybe definitely” than us GenXers. All 12 of us. Totally probably maybe. In my little blog, I get to be wonderfully unreliable about posting new stuff | content | ideas.
I will leave you with this. The reason I was inspired to start writing my blog: I woke up and I was like, life if really awesome. I love life, and I thought, I had an idea for what I wanted to say about that good feeling. I also saw some signs hanging up that I had some thoughts about that I made note to think about later. Those thoughts didn’t fit on insta and certainly not on facebook. (Luckily, I have just enough cultural sway that facebook’s stock…probably remained exactly the same as it was after you read my dig at the platform. You’re welcome facebook.)
My phoenix thought |my idea and love hope happened when I woke up. I was happy and more, I had the thought that I hope you have a good day. And my thought was, for all I know, and for all you know, actually, you only get today. It’s a concept we’re all familiar with, yes. Hackneyed, probably. It’s just today. And I thought about how I said the word trigger so much, and I thought about all of the people who were supposed to have many more days. And actually many people will say bullshit: you get eternity somewhere else, or you get forever youth somewhere else and that’s so rad. I love that. If that works for you, I’m in. But, for this particular day, as I see it, it’s just this one. Respectfully, being grumpy, being pissed, or stressed, having things in your life that don’t allow you to feel or choose happiness notwithstanding. I understand some of that, I’ve been grumpy before. For some of it, I actually can’t understand, so I peacefully empathize and know that, moving forward, I write with respect, and I write with love and I by no means assume anything of you. My love is not a zero sum, and no matter who you are, I do hope that when I see you in real life, that you know that I do see you. And, I hope that you have a good day.
So I’m back…ish. I’m in, so if you’re in, well, that’s basically a dance party. Gimme your hand, friend. Let me twirl you.
*Also, and let me know what you think about this, I think the things on your mind, that you are scientifically capable of holding at any one time, probably has a ceiling. Like that 12oz cup can only hold 12 ounces of liquid, not 15. Sometimes that cup might hold 10 or six ounces, but never more than 15 ounces. Over the last few years, I’ve picked up new memories, some new habits maybe, and I’m thinking about some of the same ol’ things in different ways…and probably in some of the same ways. And that made me want to write.
** Remind me to tell you about the time a dear friend of mine whom I regard as super funny (and also as a wonderfully terrible human) told me that he didn’t think of me as funny. He just, never thought about it, never considered it, and didn’t feel like he had necessarily witnessed me being funny.
***Said in Leslie Jaimison’s voice when she reads her memoir, The Recovering.
****Fifteen years before Lethem published his book, Bright Lights, Big City by Jay McInerney dropped, and that proppeled McInerney into a literary stardom. He was considered a literary darling. (I think some said that of Franzon when he first hit it popular.) I don’t think Lethem was ever described as a darling and I think about that a lot. Did Lethem want to be a darling? (Did McInerney?) What does it mean to be a darling of your profession, when is that useful, when is it not, and if you are a darling and then no longer a darling, when is that a good thing, and when is that not a good thing.
*****Exactly once, before I realized this person was serious about the need for things to be at right angles, before I understood some of the depths of OCD, I moved some of his folders so they were at, what, a 45 degree angle across his table and he looked so annoyed. In one moment, that look said so much, and I immediately apologized and felt so badly that I had done that. I thought it would be funny because I didn’t actually think he was that serious about the need to have his right angles at right angles. Of course I never did it again, and…annoyingly, I’ve continued to feel badly about it to this day. Maybe some of you who’ve grown up culturally guilty can understand this. I didn’t grow up culturally guilty, so you can imagine my annoyance at having such a feeling tacked onto my person.
****** I just learned this term.
+ When my friend I mentioned told me, though we’d shared lots of belly laughs together, he never really thought of me as funny, it was like a record scratch. That quintessential record scratch. Almost to my lips, I feel like I probably must have put my drink down.What? Excuse me? And I rarely, if it’s that close to being consumed, stop mid-drink and actually put the glass down.er the use of crazy when I think something is absurd, funny, confusing etc, but I am intentionally working on it.